Chapter 22

CHAPTER 22

On a break, Maddy is sitting in her usual spot overlooking Third Avenue, earbuds in her ears, listening to her five-minute set for the millionth time. She recorded herself reading her material a few days ago and has spent hours walking the streets of New York listening to herself. She’s doing her first open mic tonight at six.

She’s ready and she’s not. She knows her bits cold, but she’s got a pit in her stomach the size of Texas. She would’ve already chickened out if it weren’t for Simone, who shoots down every excuse Maddy invents like a sniper. She’s grateful and she’s not.

Her phone pings, interrupting her set.

M

MOM

11:45 AM

Why are you at Starbucks? I thought you changed your schedule to 2-8.

Maddy rolls her eyes and sighs. She agreed to share her location with her mother and sister on the Find My app “for safety,” but she can’t help feeling untrusted and spied on, like her mother is the good detective and she is the criminal bad guy.

M

MADDY

Just hanging out

Reading

M

MOM

I hope you’re not reading the book on bipolar I sent you there. You don’t want to advertise your condition to the world.

M

MADDY

It’s a novel

M

MOM

Oh good. Okay just checking on you. I’ll talk to you later. xo

This Find My app is a problem. She’ll have to stop sharing her location on the nights she goes to comedy clubs and hope that Sherlock Holmes and Emily don’t check it while she’s there. If they do and realize they can’t see where she is, she’ll say her boss started making everyone turn off their phones while they’re at work. But will they believe her?

The question echoes within the hollowed-out walls of her stomach. She drinks some of her Frappuccino and resumes listening to her set, but unanswered, the question won’t leave her alone. How many times can she get away with this?

She can’t think about this now. Pausing her set, she opens the Find My app and, even though it’s hours before she needs to, stops sharing her location. For now, it only matters that she gets away with it tonight.

Not including herself or Simone, Maddy counts nine people in the audience, all of them dudes, all comedians, and so far, she’s being exceedingly generous in anointing them with that title. Two were meh and the other three who have already done their sets were 100 percent awful, not a single redeemingly funny word. She can’t identify whether their pitiful performances make her feel better or worse about going up there. On the one hand, she can’t be worse, so that’s comforting. But she could be just as bad. She wipes her sweaty hands on her leggings.

The guy onstage now, Brendan or Brandon, she can’t remember which, is unquestionably joining their ranks.

“So is anyone here from outside the US?”

Silence. No hands raised. He taps the mic with his fingers.

“Is this thing on?”

He alone laughs, a skittish machine gun. To be fair, this is the funniest thing he’s said yet.

“Yeah, that one probably needs a full house to work. Sorry. Um, okay. What else?”

Brendan or Brandon rubs his slick forehead with the palm of his free hand, staring at the ground as he paces the stage, stooped over in his baggy jeans, fumbling his way through a series of unrelated partial thoughts about fast food and masturbating that go nowhere. He’s bombing hard, dying right in front of them as they all watch. Sure, he’s at ground zero and sustains the worst of it, but Maddy and the rest of the audience are sitting close enough to be emotional casualties.

Simone is draining her second beer. Maddy watches her with envy. She’d love a drink to calm her nerves, to give her a little liquid confidence, to anesthetize her from the pain of feeling this guy’s awkward misery, but she promised Dr. Weaver that she would abstain from drugs and alcohol. At the moment, she can’t remember the reason why.

She checks her phone, wondering if anyone is keeping track of the time. This guy’s five-minute set is taking an hour and a half. She’d rather watch dental surgery.

“That’s it for me.”

Everyone claps as he walks off the stage. He smiles, lifting his posture, receiving the applause as a compliment for his set instead of gratitude for its conclusion. He’ll probably go home and call his mother, tell her that he was awesome tonight. What a deluded moron.

Please don’t let that be me.

“Next up, we have Maddy Banks.”

All eyes expectant and on her, Maddy’s legs forget how to stand.

“Woo-hoo!” hoots Simone, clapping. She nudges Maddy by the shoulder. “Go on. You got this.”

She somehow manages to stand and walks the short and long distance to the stage. The emcee is an older man, bald with glasses and a gray goatee that makes him look edgier than he probably is. He’s wearing jeans and an untucked olive-green corduroy shirt and smells of cigarettes. He passes the mic to Maddy.

She holds it in both hands like a prayer, standing center stage, squinting into the spotlight. She shifts the mic to her right hand and retrieves her phone from the pocket of her denim jacket. Her five minutes are memorized, but she holds her phone in her left hand, the Notes app opened to her set in bullet points, reminders she can glance at if her brain farts and she needs prompting. The mic quivers in her hand, making her look even more nervous than she is. She reads the first bullet, then gazes past the darkened audience to the back wall and clears her throat.

“So many of the girls I know are in therapy and none of the guys are. It’s like we’re spending all this time and money trying to come up with the antidote to poisonous venom. How about we just stop dating snakes?”

She hears Simone’s laugh, a single crow cawing in an otherwise silent forest. Uh-oh . Maddy’s stomach sinks. A panicked bird flaps its wings, caged inside her ribs, unable to escape, making it difficult for her to breath.

“I used to go to NYU, and the people there are supposed to be really smart, but I don’t know, I’m not impressed. You know who’s smart? The guy who parks the waffle food truck outside the dorms at one a.m. That guy’s a genius. Someone should give that guy a PhD.”

Again, she hears only Simone. Her laugh is like a New Year’s Eve party horn, a blasting honk with no nuance, a singular note finding no accompaniment in the crowd. Real laughter is contagious. Like a yawn or the flu, it spreads, infecting anyone exposed to it. Maddy dares to scan the audience. Everyone but Simone is straight-faced and silent. Bored.

Blood leaves Maddy’s head in a hurry like water flushing down a toilet. Her trembling hands go tingly. The dudes are all blank-eyed, crossed-armed, or looking down. Simone’s face stays glued to Maddy’s, nodding, willing her on.

Working off rote memorization, Maddy keeps going, and she can hear herself talking as if she were standing to the side, stage left, out of body. The pathetic girl onstage keeps talking, her hand shaking the microphone more violently, her voice thin and withering as she rushes through her material, only pausing to give space for the singular forced laugh that greets each weak punch line.

She’s a wounded baby gazelle alone in the open savanna of this spotlighted stage. A voice inside her head is frenzied, screaming.

RUN!

Get off the stage!

You are DYING up here.

GO!

But another part of her somehow finds the nerve to keep her feet planted and her mouth moving. The screaming voice inside her head stops, gobsmacked that she possesses the audacity to ignore it. The part of her watching from stage left continues to observe, both horrified and strangely entertained by the train wreck.

“I hate thongs. I feel like I’m straddling my naked lady parts on a tightrope wire. Every time I take a step, it’s like I’m flossing the plaque out of my vagina.”

She hears the sound of someone other than Simone, the clear baritone staccato of a guy laughing out loud. Every part of her is stunned still. She scans the audience, trying to locate where the laughter came from, but finds no clues.

The moment was fleeting, less than a full second of sound, but that was real laughter caused by something she said. Like high-octane fuel pumped into a car’s empty tank or rain soaking into the earth of a water-starved garden, she is reanimated, reintegrated. Saved. She continues, riding the high of that magical exchange, chasing the possibility of the next one.

“But we girls have to wear thongs or God forbid people will see our panty lines. You’ve never heard a dude say, ‘Can you see my tighty-whities through these jeans?’ Half my pants, the material is so thin, I’m basically wearing high-waisted Kleenex.”

There it is again. The distinct, musical harmony of two people laughing. She pauses, enchanted by the unexpected human connection she created. A hit of dopamine surges throughout her brain and body, the impact massive and immediate. This feels really fucking good.

Her five minutes up, she hands the mic to the emcee as if it were a ticking time bomb about to go off and speed walks off the stage. As she makes her way back to the safety of her darkened seat, she evaluates her set in her mind. Four minutes and thirty seconds were useless, humiliating junk that she will never repeat again. But she had thirty seconds that worked, and for that half minute, everything in her broken universe clicked into perfect place, whole.

It’s not much, not nearly as much as she’d hoped for, but she feels encouraged, justified. Worthy even. It’s enough to call a beginning. Every cathedral ever built began with the placement of a single stone.

“Let’s get a drink,” says Simone, already two drinks in, as they walk out to the bar and lobby of the comedy club.

Dr. Weaver’s admonition replaying in her mind, Maddy hesitates. But now it sounds overly cautious and unnecessary, something her doctor was required to say, like a tiny-font user agreement that no one ever reads but everyone accepts. It’s not like she’s going to get wasted. She survived her first open mic! She deserves to celebrate with her new friend.

“Okay.”

It’s early, and the bar is dead. They pick two seats at the end of the counter near the door. Maddy orders a vodka soda with a splash of cranberry and a lime, and Simone orders another beer.

“So that was brutal,” says Maddy.

“Doesn’t matter. You did it,” says Simone. “And you were totally rockin’ it at the end.”

The bartender places their drinks on the bar.

“Congratulations, stand-up comic,” says Simone, holding her beer high.

Maddy clinks Simone’s glass, smiling. “I did it!”

A shocking rush of cold air sweeps into the bar. Maddy turns to look over her shoulder, and there is Max, the first comedian she met back in November, standing as tall as ever by the door in a black puffy jacket and red knit hat, his cheeks pink from the cold. He catches her gaze, recognizes her, and smiles. She remembers only disconnected pieces of her encounter with him, but enough to make her face flush hot.

“Hey, Maddy,” says Max, now standing behind and between them. “Haven’t seen you in a while.”

“Hey,” says Maddy, unable to elaborate, stunned that he remembers her name. “This is my friend Simone.”

“Max. Nice to meet you,” he says to a widely grinning Simone. “You two here for the next show?”

“This amazing woman just did her very first five-minute set,” says Simone, beaming like a proud grandmother.

“That’s phenomenal!”

Max offers his hand, palm facing Maddy, waiting for a high five. She presses her hand against his, and a warm current passes through the point of connection, buzzing through her body. She doesn’t remember much about him, but she remembers that.

“How’d it go?” he asks.

“I’m glad you weren’t here to see it,” says Maddy.

“She was great.”

“Please. I was not great. I had maybe a moment of greatness. It was mostly embarrassing.”

“Nah, don’t be embarrassed. That’s what open mics are for,” Max says. “You learn what isn’t funny.”

“Well then, I learned a lot tonight.”

“Did you record it on your phone?”

“No.”

“You have to, from now on. You have to listen to yourself, play it back over and over, hear what works, what doesn’t, what to cut, what to emphasize, where to pause or fiddle with the timing.”

Max orders a beer and continues to talk shop. Maddy is rapt, soaking in every word, thrilled to be taken seriously by a real comic, by him.

“I gotta bounce,” says Simone, after finishing her beer. She zips her coat and looks at Maddy, trying to size up the situation. “You good?”

“Yeah.”

Simone nods, satisfied. “Proud of you. See you tomorrow.”

“Thank you for coming, and thanks for making me do this,” says Maddy.

Simone stands, gives Maddy a hug, says good night to Max, and leaves. Max takes her vacated seat, removes his hat, and combs his hair with his fingers.

“So,” he says, reaching for what to talk about next. “How’s school?”

She’s stumped for a palpable moment, unsure of what to reveal. Swirling in the sweet gooey high of those laughs, of not dying onstage, and now talking to Max, she could almost believe that everything that’s happened prior to tonight belongs to some other girl’s past. Tonight is a much-needed win after eternal months of loss. She doesn’t want to say anything to blow it up.

“I’m taking this semester off.”

“Oh yeah, how come?”

She sucks down the rest of her vodka soda, buying time as she chooses her words.

“Thought I’d try this for a bit.”

“Cool. I kept looking for you, but it’s like you just disappeared.”

Yeah, I had a psychotic breakdown, spent time in a mental hospital, and was diagnosed with bipolar disorder. Wait, why are you leaving?

“I had some stuff to take care of.”

Max nods and says nothing. Maddy catches the attention of the bartender and orders another drink.

“Well, I’m glad you’re back. You look great.”

She laughs, a nervous deflection of his compliment. She’s wearing black leggings with white sneakers and an oversize denim jacket over a basic gray T-shirt. Self-conscious about her weight gain and complexion, which can be masked only so much by makeup, she crosses her arms over her stomach. He can’t mean it, but her dumb heart believes him.

“Thanks.”

“I’m on tonight at eight, trying out some new material. Can you stay?”

She checks the time on her phone. If she doesn’t get back to the apartment by eight fifteen, Emily will start worrying. Her stagecoach will most definitely transmute into a pumpkin if she stays until nine or later. She can’t risk it, not after only one open mic.

“I want to, but I can’t, not tonight. But I have time for one more drink.”

Maddy restored her location sharing on the Find My app as soon as she got to Murray Hill. Emily suspected nothing. They watched Schitt’s Creek and ate popcorn. Her mother’s texts were the usual inquisitions. To them, it was just a normal Monday night.

Maddy lies in her bed on her sister’s couch, lights off, her eyes open. She pretended to be asleep when Tim got home about an hour ago. It’s well after midnight, and she’s still wide awake, her brain wired and replaying highlights from the night on repeat like scenes from a favorite movie. Only she’s the star.

Maddy’s Self-Rated Daily Mood Chart

0= none

1= mild

2= moderate

3= severe

Most depressed mood: 0

Most elevated mood: 2

Anxiety: 3

Irritability: 1

Psychosis (hallucinations, strange ideas): 0

Hours slept last night: 8

Weight: 158

Did you take all of your medications: yes

# text messages sent: 16

Did you purchase anything too expensive or impractical: no

Did you have any unrealistic thoughts about Taylor Swift: no

Did you have any unrealistic thoughts about writing comedy: no